Witty, scathing fights and sexy make up time
As anyone who’s ever experienced it knows, arguing is not hilarious. There is NEVER a monkey involved and there is NEVER a heart-wrenching reconciliation later on. There is pain. Just pain. Endless pain.

Friends try to help, with hilarious consequences
Do they? Really? No. Friends NEVER try to help, they are either too busy with their own perfect relationship or too busy rutting other care-free singles to show concern for your emotional life. Just like you will be when they’re pathetic and alone.

Pretending you do a job you don’t
Remember that time you convinced everyone you were a hairdresser/librarian/nuclear physicist just because the object of your affection frequented the hairdresser/library/Large Hadron Collider? No you don’t, because you haven’t, and why? Well, partly because you’re sane but mostly because, well, the way jobs work is that you can’t just stop going to disappear and play pretend for a bit. And even if you could, let’s say the object of your affection is convinced you really know the point of nasty 80s crimping, can understand the Dewy decimal system without the help an enigma machine or know where the Higgs boson is hiding, what happens when they find out you’re just pretending? In a film it’s all chuckles and sunsets, in reality, at the very least it’s a restraining order and the job centre.

It was your best friend all along
You know when you’ve been in love with your best friend for years and you finally tell them, and it turns out they feel the same? No. Because it turns out they didn’t and now you’ve turned a close friendship into a master class in awkwardness that will last as long as the crippled remnants of your non-relationship limp on.

And that’s why romantic comedies should be banned.

It's life Jim

Surely not when there’s mould on it? Or do you just scoop off the mould so you can microwave it? The thing is, you know you won’t have got all the mould off. And that mould is life, which makes the microwave a murder weapon or even a weapon of mass destruction. Although I grant you it’s only the sick mind that stands in front of the microwave, cackling and screaming "Die! Die! I am POWER!"; and it’s certainly not something I have ever done (untrue).

I'm sure it’s fine to have coffee a couple of days on, once you get the mould off, but the more important question is, does it lose its caffeine? Is the dirty-sweet, brain-jigging, jitter-inducing goodness still locked in there, like Han Solo in Carbonite?

…Mmm Han-Carbonite flavoured coffee, keeps you awake and makes your rugged and loveable. I’d buy that…

…Because if the caffeine is still in there, let’s face it, you’ll do whatever must to get at it. Yeah you will, when you’re up late studying, working to a deadline or whatever, if you know that old cup of coffee is the only caffeine in the house, you’ll do whatever it takes to harvest it. And if you happen to look down at your coffee and notice the mould has grown to form a shape that looks a lot like ‘H E L L O’, you’ll still bin it and nuke it in the microwave. Yes you will; although maniacal laughing is optional.

Lead on

He also has a cat that reads books to him. Thedog likes murder mysteries. But that cat lies. She tells him the wrong ending to books. According to the cat, Miss Marple often turns into a blood-thirsty pirate or deadly robot; who always murder dogs.

At night the dog crys tears from his blind eyes. And the cat laughs.

Read it

Really Daily Mail? A house that looks like Hitler? Wow.

This must be stopped! How long until we are affronted by the sight of a garage that looks like Mussolini? Or a garden wall that looks like Stalin? And then how long until they form a new, inanimate axis of evil? Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Gather now brothers and sisters. We shall fight them on the driveways, and in the gardens. And throughout suburbia!

But for now, maybe we should learn a lesson from history and take early action against this evil house? I hear David Cameron is suggesting a no-fly zone and posting some fiery faeces through the letter box.

Read the idiocy here.

Crazy and crazyer

All we need do is send Charlie Sheen into Libya. Let Gaddafi see the true face of madness. And while he stares in horror, and tries to comprehend the mind-meltingly awesome outcome of Western society's most capitalist democracy, the people will have a chance to re-assert themselves.

Failing that he can take his machete to him; or pretend Gaddafi is a tiger and drink his blood. That I'd like to see. Charlie Sheen on top of a building, machete in one hand and a bottle of Gaddafi blood in the other.

The worst case scenario (or best, depending on your point of view) is that they mate. They would spawn a creature so crazy it could only exist in a dimension made of avocado, in a house made of lemon thought, on an island that is only divisible by 17, in October, which is not a month but a type of religious cheese.

I have been wondering if sometimes, just occasionally, when the Pope looks at the Popemobile, he thinks about the Batmobile and wonders what might have been. But I now realise that's not the case. He doesn’t have to wonder. His whole life is modelled on Batman's. Here are the facts:

1. We all know Italy is full of corrupt politicians. Rome's a dirty town and it needs cleaning up. Just like Gotham.

2. He's got a special car although this is perhaps the most pathetic part of his attempt to be Batman.

Pathetic wannabe Batmobile

3. The Vatican is basically a huge mansion, beneath which there are huge vaults and crypts, equivalent to a cave. And don't tell me he doesn't have the money to deck them out with the latest equipment.

4. He's deliberately in the public eye. Like Bruce Wayne.

This is all the stone cold, undeniable truth, which strongly suggests he leads a double life as 'The Cross', "Doing God's work, one filthy secular criminal at a time". I'm sure he has throwing stars in the shape of a crucifix. His papal cap is probably detachable and able to decapitate enemies when thrown. He probably baptises children in a single bound and says mass faster than a speeding Anglican. His main weapon, of course, is making criminals feel very guilty, although this just makes them call their mum more often.

If you think all this is just rhetoric, remember, he's already got the military style training. And he wears a cape.

Standing in the queue for the gate, staring at the black information board; a boy runs his fingers over the ticking digital clock next to our flight number. Every few seconds the digits change to show the date, 16th July. I realise I’m staring at nothing.

Can a mind stare? Mine does, it’s a blank sheet with occasional spikes of colour, odd shapes and disjointed memories, some of which may be dreams. Apparently this is what happens when I don’t sleep for two days, I'm no good at it.

It was the perfect honeymoon, tropical sun, amazing sites, the chance to really bathe in each other’s company and, of course, to read.

The flight back was 12 hours. A tube home to pick up smart clothes and then a wide-eyed, steering wheel-strangling drive back to the airport. Now we’re awaiting another economy cabin, cacophony of children and close encounter with people yet to discover the mysterious secret of deodorant.

So I'm slack-jawed in front of the screen, like a Doberman learning plumbing. Something starts to feel wrong. I'm looking at the numbers flip around the screen. A fingernail scratches across my brain as it involuntarily does some maths. A whisper from my starting-to-sicken stomach says, “You deserve this”. The numbers are starting to mean something.

The time is 5:56. One six. Add five, five, and six, you get 16. That’s two sixes. It's rare for my mind to fixate on numbers, knowing they make my head hurt I usually avoid them. Suddenly it seems I can't, but why are the two sixes important? They aren't. Then the screen switches from time to date. And suddenly those sixes mean more – today’s date, the 16th. One more six, 666, the number of the beast.

“That's dull coincidence,” the few shreds left of my rationale brain tell me. I half smile at my own foolishness and then the screen changes again. The flight number is AOY666. A cold shiver runs right through me and shimmers off across the polished floor.

A glimmer of reason remains, murmuring, “Fluke...chance...ignore it.” Further along the reflective black screen, a demonic face stares back at me and mocks. Refocusing my bloodshot eyes I'm reminded exactly where our plane is going, Helsinki the capital of Finland. And as airports describe London as LON it's crystal clear, we're flying straight to HEL.

This is what happens. I've no one to blame but myself. These are the consequences, of entering his world. For all the short-term cheap thrills I thought could be laughed away, that I thought wouldn't affect me, these are my just desserts, for reading a Dan Brown book. This is our fate, mine and yours, this is his dark legacy.

You’ll count the steps to old buildings as you walk, to find the Masonic pterodactyl number. Bank notes become a part of a conspiracy, as you wonder why, when folded they show a picture of Michelangelo’s body with the head of Medusa. And one day, you’ll look in the same mirror you stare at every day and the lines on your face will be revealed as a map to sacred goblet, or something.

Worst of all, you’ll start to lie to yourself. You’ll promise you won’t read another. But you will, next time you’re on holiday. Yes you will. For he wills it. And so do I.

I'm not telling you that UFOs are abducting people. I'm not trying to convince you that people are turning into wolves underneath a full moon, I won't insult your intelligence. However, there is one who walks amongst us, a spectral creature of the night, who likely feasts on blood and disappears as smoke in the night. He is come.

Bee keeper or Vampire? You decide. No, actually I decide. He's a vampire.

Granted he doesn't look like your typical vision of a vampire. No sharp teeth. Conspicuous lack of cape. And I suspect, a somewhat underdeveloped ability to attract impressionable young virgins with his raw, sexual energy.  But the fact remains, he is a vampire.

He may not have been seen drinking blood or turning into a bat for japes. He may be fine with crucifixes. However that proves nothing, as over the years numerous cultural interpretations of vampires have shown us a huge variety of differing, often conflicting, abilities, strengths and weaknesses. The latest incarnation being from the Twilight films, in which vampires are pretty teens with nice sharp teeth that are slightly whiter than usual, who brood occasionally and quite like forests but not parents. I'd like to put one of them in a locked room with Christopher Lee or Max Shreck. Then we'd see who's the real vampire and who is a stain of fear, tears and excreta that no-one could can bothered to wipe up.

Anyway, the boy pictured is a proven vampire, not because of his fear of holy water (Simon Cowell), or sleeping in a coffin (Peter Mandleson) but because he can't be out in the sun too long or his skin burns JUST LIKE A VAMPIRE. In fact he constantly has to wear Factor 50 sun cream - EVEN INDOORS. That clearly proves it. He is truly one of the un-dead. I imagine the local pitch fork and fiery torch businesses are booming in his home town, which can only be good for the economy.

So there you have it, concrete proof. And the story of a little boy with an unusual skin condition, used as a weak excuse for some tedious ramblings. I think we all know who the real monster is here. The boy. Obviously. He's a bloody vampire.

Read about it here, if you really must. But don''t blame me for how dull life really is.

I couldn't work out what disturbed me about that at first. Then I realised the number is a land line.

That raises all sorts of existential questions. How can the driver be driving and answering the land line somewhere?

Unless he's got some kind of 'Michael Keaton in Multiplicity' thing going on, which I doubt. God what a waste of multiple bodies that film demonstrated. I didn't even see the film but I know for a fact that at no point did he use a spare body as an alibi to get away with the horrifc, but entirely morally jusitfiable, torture and murder of a self-rightous politician or moaning child.

The Keatons at home

And what happens if I call that number on the back of the van to complain? I probably crash the car because I'm on the phone.

Then someone rings the number from the sticker on the back of my car that says, "How's my driving? 020 368 4688". Then they crash their car because they're on the phone. And someone else rings the number on the back of their car and...

...the cycle continues for ever.

Or something.

in a galaxy far, far away

there was a parallel universe.

In that universe: Luke Skywalker was a gerbil, Princess Leia was a butterfly, Jabba the Hut was still a massive slug and Han Solo can be seen here:

It tastes exactly like carbonite.

Yes. It's a mouse someone found in some malt loaf. Must have been a great game of hide and seek. Bad place to hide though. Somewhere there's a very frustrated cat.

I like malt loaf. It's one of those things you're not suppsed to eat until you're at least 75. Still though by that time I should at least be able to cut it with a real working light sabre (mutters silent prayer to robo-god of the future).